We follow up on the findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. As many listeners may know, the tribunal was created in response to the international community’s inaction regarding Israel’s recognized violations of international law. Jury and speakers included Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Peter Hansen, Diana Buttu, Phyllis Bennis, Katie Gallagher and Russell Means.

Each of the sessions focuses on a different component of the problems that has led to a failure to achieve a solution to what some may describe as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

More specifically to achieve Palestinian self-determination and equality with their Jewish-Israeli counterparts.

The first tribunal explored the EU complicity. A condition for Israel’s acceptance into the United Nations was its acceptance of returning refugees to their homes per UN Resolution 194.

Since the 1967 war they’ve been supported by unequivocal US financial, military and diplomatic support.

Corporate complicity: The corporations that are involved in funding the Israeli military arsenal and its construction arsenal to expand its colonial settlements in the Occupied Territory as well as building a wall deemed illegal by the National Court of Justice.

This fourth and final session brought everything back to the U.S.

To New York specifically because the U.S. has proven to be the primary obstacle in resolving this conflict.

Consider first that Israel has received 115 billion dollars in aid since World War 2. Making it the highest recipient of US foreign aid.

In addition to that Israel receives approximately 3 billion dollars a year. It receives money without any review in US law, specifically the Arms Export Control Act which conditions that all US aid to foreign countries must be used to further human rights or in self defense.

The US is shielding Israeli responsibility in the UN Security Council

The resolution process is stonewalled internationally.

One of the things that we’d love to do is remove the veto power from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Guest – Attorney Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and activist. She is currently a Abraham L. Freedman Teaching Fellow at Temple University, Beasley School of Law and the U.S. based Legal Advocacy Consultant for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. She has taught international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University since Spring 2009. Noura also has helped seed BDS campaigns as a national grassroots organizer with the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

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Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Ilan Pappé Speech

The final session of the Tribunal focused on the responsibility of the United States of America and the United Nations regarding the Israeli breaches of international law towards Palestine and Palestinians. There is now a situation in which Israel has achieved a status of immunity and impunity, facilitated by the US, despite its complete disregard for the norms and standards of international law.

Speaker – Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian and activist. He is currently a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988)